


Pieces

by salienne



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-06
Updated: 2008-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:12:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salienne/pseuds/salienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Journey's End. There are several very fine lines between loving and settling and accepting. To Rose, they’re all just a big blur.</p><p>A late-night conversation between Rose and the Doctor who is just not her Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pieces

They lie in bed together, fully clothed and as far apart as they can get without falling off. This Doctor, this _other_ Doctor, has the guestroom down the hall from hers now. Really she lives miles away from her parents’ mansion, in a flat closer to Torchwood tower, but she couldn’t bear to be alone with him there and she certainly couldn’t leave him here, all misplaced and by himself.

They’ve been not talking for five days now, busy with shopping and the fire his toast turned into and paperwork she told a surprised Pete she was going to do on time for once. But she’s tired, and she doesn’t even have Mickey for those 3 AM phone calls anymore, and it’s almost like the first time she got stuck here except now she knows it really is forever and that’s supposed to be good somehow.

So still in her cloud-print PJ’s she walked down the hall and came to him because she knew he wouldn’t, and now they lie apart on the same bed until he breaks the silence with such a simple, unDoctorish question.

“What’re you thinking?”

It hurts, this reminder of something missing beside her, and she can’t help but snap, “You’re half Time Lord. You tell me.”

She hears nothing from his side of the bed, absolutely nothing, and she presses her head back into the pillow, cursing herself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“I’m not him, Rose. And I’m sorry but I’m not and I can’t change that.”

His voice is shaking. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard it quite like that before, not once, not ever, not even when he told her he was burning up a sun just to say a goodbye that never came.

The only time that came close was when he told her about a planet that had long since died. That had burned.

She flips onto her side and reaches out, squeezing his arm. Slowly, he rolls over to face her, pulling his arm back so that their hands can clasp. It is chilly in this room, the air conditioning on too high, and his fingers are cold, just like it used to be. His face is draped in shadow and thinner than she remembers, the skin more worn and the cheeks more hollow.

It’s still all too familiar, too painfully familiar, but at least he’s far enough away for her to feel safe.

“I know,” she whispers. It’s just—”

“But that’s just it,” he tells her, his voice earnest and, in its quiet energy, soothing. “Don’t you see? He couldn’t stay with you. He wanted to, ‘course he did, but he couldn’t. He never could. But I _can_.”

Their hands are still linked, skin and bone squeezed between skin and bone, and Rose feels her own heart speed up as he brings her hand to his chest. He releases her and Rose presses her palm against the thin gray fabric of his t-shirt, there against the middle of his ribcage, for the first time since the beach. Despite herself she feels the tears rise, the sensation of just one strong steady heart beating calling up equal measures of awe and grief.

Softly, he repeats, “I can stay.”

“Yeah,” she says, “you can. An’ you will ‘cos I’m not lettin’ you go.” Rose takes a breath, so shaky that it’s a complete failure as an attempt to calm herself. Her eyes blur and sting. “But what about him? The Doctor, the other Doctor, he’s a universe away, again. Forever. An’… you _need_ me, that’s what he told me, you need me. But so does he.”

And, even though she can’t tell this Doctor, though she won’t, not ever, she needs _him_. Even though he was a right bloody prat who made the choice for her again, she still needs _him_.

And this just isn’t him.

She pulls her hand away, the fingers closing on nothing, and rolls onto her back, her eyes shut. She told herself she wouldn’t cry over the loss of him anymore, not ever. Instead of lying around moping she would do something with herself, she would take all the energy she might use for grieving and use it to save the world and get back to him instead.

Well, now she’s done that. She helped save the universe, every universe, and now he’s here, a Time Lord with a human life span, hers to keep. The Doctor and Rose. Sort of.

She can still see him, the real him, there in the darkness behind her eyelids, the brown suit and the tired eyes. That great hair, the way he smelled, all warm and electric, when she hugged him in the TARDIS. The way this Doctor’s lips felt, dry and pliant, pressed against hers. The way he pulled her in so close, both their eyes shut. The way she still never even got to hug him goodbye.

 _He needs you. That’s very me._

 _Does it need saying?_

It was a test, a challenge, a way to keep him there for just a few more minutes. And this man, this almost Time Lord beside her, he passed. She kissed this man, and though she thought of the Doctor at the time, of the Time Lord with two hearts and a brown suit and the two of them giggling as he twirled around the console, she still knew who had said the words. She knew which piece was hers, and which piece never would be.

Her chest trembles as she breathes, and she wipes away the wetness leaking past her eyelids and down along her temples. She’s shivering, just a little. It’s too damn cold in this room.

This man beside her, she could grow to love him. She already does, sort of. Even though he’s different, more sarcastic than he should be, meeker, following her with desperate knowing eyes, she knows what was, what could be. It doesn’t take the Vortex burning through her synapses to figure that one out.

But it still hurts because it’s just not the Doctor. It’s a piece of him, with, as he put it, a dash of Donna thrown in. It’s the Doctor squashed and twisted and packaged in a mortal body with pinstriped blue wrapping.

It’s just not the whole man and it’s not the original, and damn it maybe she’s selfish but she _wants_ that.

She wants him.

His voice is so quiet she can barely hear it, even though his face is just inches away. “I’m sorry.”

And he means it. She can hear it in the quiet empty way he says it. Genocidal killer or not, she knows that he would trade places with his double if he could, if it meant making her happy. The other Doctor did.

Rose opens her eyes and reaches out, closing her hand around his again. She turns over, unwilling to let herself get any closer to him but unable to stay so far away, not when she can hear that pain in his voice. In the darkness, his eyes meet hers.

“I can’t promise you anything,” she says. “I can’t even promise you forever ‘cos we can’t have that, can we? You taught me that. But… there’s a place for you here. There’s me, an’ there’s my family, an’ there’s Torchwood, an’… I don’t care what the Doctor said, I’m not your keeper, but if you want to…” Her eyes bore into his, as wide and dark and impenetrable as ever. “You can stay here.” She takes another breath, something nervous and tight in her chest. This is it—she has a choice, to maintain this distance or to traverse it. To run away or to give this a chance.

Rose makes her choice. She finishes the sentence. “With me.”

The last thing Rose expects is the kiss that follows, his hand on the back of her head and his lips and teeth crushed against hers. It’s messy and dark and a bit painful, and while it would be a lie to say she doesn’t think of how it might be with the other Doctor, that she doesn’t imagine how cool his lips would be or how his tongue might move against hers, she knows who is in this room with her.

Rose knows which Doctor she got. And somehow, it’s almost okay.

Pulling away she smiles at him and he at her, that goofy lopsided grin of his.

“Is that a yes then?” she asks, close to giggling, a strange euphoria whizzing through her head.

His words are strong and definite. “That’s a yes.”

And for the first time Rose thinks, maybe they will fit together, somehow. Not an echo of her and an echo of him. Not eyes squeezed shut and fake utterances of “Doctor.” Not even the happiness she is now so used to, a thick shell surrounding a hollow center of longing.

Maybe, given time, this will work. It did for her mum.

And maybe one day, this odd mix of human and Time Lord and a man she knew and loved so well won’t be just a broken piece of the Doctor anymore. Though it terrifies her to even think it, maybe one day she’ll see her Doctor as just another piece of him.

Maybe. And right now, that maybe is enough.


End file.
